You might have heard about Kevin Slaten’s lengthy interview of NBC’s Bob Costas on KQQZ St. Louis last week, in which Costas admitted that his opinion about the Penn Situation has changed considerably since he voiced his original words on the subject.
Onward State has done a good job of summarizing that interview, publishing some of the meatier quotes from it. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire interview, read Kevin Horne’s piece. Here are a couple of Costas quotes:
“What Freeh did, it seems to me, was not only gather facts but he reached a conclusion which is at least debatable from those facts and than he assigned a motivation, not only to Curley and Schultz and Spanier, but he specifically assigned a very dark motivation to Joe Paterno, which seems like it might be quite a leap.”
“I think a lot of this, and how people responded to it, could be summed up in an exchange I had with Joe Posnanski…In many corners, Joe was pilloried for going too soft on Paterno in the book because his conclusion was that Paterno had come up short but had not been guilty of anything like Freeh alleged. You know what I think some of this comes down to? At least now, people are so repulsed by what Sandusky did and so startled that somebody, somehow, didn’t observe it, figure it out, and stop him, that they think that anything short of a blanket condemnation of everybody there somehow translated into you being insufficiently concerned about the victims, and insufficiently outraged by Sandusky’s behavior. So no shades of grey in degrees of culpability are permitted — the only way that you can spread your righteous indignation is to say damn them all. And that may be understandable, but it may not be fair.”
However, if you can spare the time, the whole radio interview is available here.
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Joe says
I’ve listened to the broadcast and was quite surprised at Costas turnaround. I’ve also been wondering how much of this actually made it to the mainstream media or who else Costas has changed his viewpoint.
This article on BSD echoes the same thought. I don’t know if Costas will share his new opinion on the shit pile that was created by Freeh, but it sure would be nice if he did.
http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2013/3/14/4103236/stand-up-and-be-counted-bob-costas
The Nittany Turkey says
[Reproduced from a private email to Joe in order to lead into my post on the subject.]
Costas has an opinion, as do we all, and you know what “they” say about opinions. Sportscasters, including Costas, are nowhere near as influential as Collyer suggests. Otherwise, we all would have agreed with Costas the first time around. But “we” don’t count, because we know more and see more than the average Joe. We want the average Joe to be swayed to our position and we think we need Costas to get there. So, the average Joe is a lemming, swayed whichever way the popular media would like Joe to go? If this is true, then why are we immune? We sit on our lofty perch looking for a savior in the form of Bob Costas and hope we can turn the lemmings away from the cliff?
I feel a blog post coming on.
—TNT